male gamers like to pretend that male characters designed, draw/rendered and written by men, made hulkishly muscular and hypermasculine by men for a deliberate target audience of men is objectification and hypersexualisation rather than actively appealing to male power fantasy
and it’s somehow women’s fault of course
My favorite example of this is when people try to invoke this guy as their ultimate trump card of “Men are objectified in video games too!”
The ultimate steroid rager who converses primarily by screaming and murdering. A completely selfish man who, since murdering his wife and daughter, seems to only one emotion (anger) and prone to random acts of violence. A man so terrible that he goes out of his way to incorporate murdering random women* into “puzzle solving”.**
People actually point to this character, created by a man (David Jaffe) and try to tell us this is objectification of men in order to pander to women.
Then, presumably, after throwing a tantrum and destroying random objects in their home, then wonder why women aren’t impressed by this and find them undateable.
* The fact that almost the entire female population, including the monsters, goes to great pains to show off their breasts to the player also never seems to factor into their assessment.
** This sequence featured in Tropes vs Women in Video Games – however please be advised that this sequence along with other parts in the video contain extreme depictions of violence against women. (x)
– wincenworks
So, due to some minor events that gave this myth a shot in the arm, it’s probably worth bringing this back this week, particularly since said event related to barbarians and similarly physically powerful warriors.
The notion that “men are objectified too” really doesn’t hold up under the slightest scrutiny – particularly when so much media insists on asking the audience to cheer for super violent male characters who are often amazingly unlikeable.
As always with HBomb’s videos, he lays down a pretty in-depth breakdown of the topic at hand, in this case – the supposed male objectification of video game protagonists and general issue of gendered false equivalence in game design.
Our own, revised version of this. That chart always bugged me to no end, so ultimately, we decided to make one that is, in our opinion, accurate to what the descriptions say.
If you wondered why Kratos is the “heroically idealized” example, not “sexualized”, here’s a handy list of posts explaining why muscly bare-chested men are not as objectifed as women in armor bikinis:
Generally, popular media is free to approach male warrior types from whatever perspective they find interesting, but with female characters the priority is showcasing their (conventional) femininity/attractiveness/sexiness. There’s little to no happy medium between the (rare) realistically designed warrior women and ridiculously… stylized ones, cause the only “stylized” thing about female character design seem to be their boobs, butts and amount of skin showing.
I think it’s worth noting that finding a direct comparison to Kratos is more or less impossible because popular media is so adverse to muscular women (and female nipples).
The two major candidates for the Heroically Idealized were Thorn (shown above) and (prologue) Female Mage Hawke from Dragon Age 2 – because popular media is only really comfortable with badass women fighting from a distance. That or, like Bayonetta, for every ounce of badassery, they have to have about half a pound of sexy so they don’t intimidate the assumed straight male audience.
The most dramatic example: Samus Aran is supposed to be 6’2" and 200 pounds of pure ass kicking, but she’s depicted as fitting the conventional standard of “thin and pretty”. This meant that the designers of Super Smash Bros felt that without her armor, she’d need special jet boots to compete with the other fighters (many of whom are not warriors).
Today bringing back this convenient chart and master post on what constitutes false equivalence between female and male warrior characters.
Here’s a reminder that it’s very hard to find an honest to God (non-porn or non-parody) male design which would be made first and foremost with sexual availability in mind.
male gamers like to pretend that male characters designed, draw/rendered and written by men, made hulkishly muscular and hypermasculine by men for a deliberate target audience of men is objectification and hypersexualisation rather than actively appealing to male power fantasy
and it’s somehow women’s fault of course
My favorite example of this is when people try to invoke this guy as their ultimate trump card of “Men are objectified in video games too!”
The ultimate steroid rager who converses primarily by screaming and murdering. A completely selfish man who, since murdering his wife and daughter, seems to only one emotion (anger) and prone to random acts of violence. A man so terrible that he goes out of his way to incorporate murdering random women* into “puzzle solving”.**
People actually point to this character, created by a man (David Jaffe) and try to tell us this is objectification of men in order to pander to women.
Then, presumably, after throwing a tantrum and destroying random objects in their home, then wonder why women aren’t impressed by this and find them undateable.
* The fact that almost the entire female population, including the monsters, goes to great pains to show off their breasts to the player also never seems to factor into their assessment.
** This sequence featured in Tropes vs Women in Video Games – however please be advised that this sequence along with other parts in the video contain extreme depictions of violence against women. (x)
